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It has occurred to me that, in past years, I wrote in my web-log things with which I do not agree today. With this in mind, I'll have you know that everything written here will someday probably be repudiated by me.

Is it nearly New Year's again? What an awful year this was. I suppose there's always hope for the next.

Some interesting links: Chaucer, reviewed | European hereditary titles (ah, so that's what a margrave is!)
 

18 December 2008: Fitting God in a Box

O Adonai, dux domus Israel,
qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et in Sina legem dedisti:
veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extenso.
"O Lord (Exodus 6:2), leader of the house of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2) and on Mount Sinai gave him the law (Exodus 20):
come and free us with your powerful arm (Exodus 15:12-13)."

17 December 2008: No Gnostics Need Apply
Today begin, for those interested in this sort of thing, the seven O Antiphons, which you probably know as verses of "O Come Emmanuël". Today's is about wisdom, or something:

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,
attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.
"O Wisdom, who come from the mouth of the Most High (Sirach 24:3),
who reach to the ends of the earth and order all things with power and sweetness (Wisdom 8:1):
come and teach us the way of wisdom (Proverbs 9:6)."

16 December 2008: Matters Wintry
It is sometimes difficult to understand the widespread aversion to winter; driving aside, there's nothing particularly unpleasant about this time of year. (Or, nothing particularly more unpleasant than other times of year, anyway.) Everyone should get a chance to spend an afternoon sitting in front of the window with a cup of tea (or whatever beverage is most apropos), watching snow fall. It brings to mind poems. After fall and spring, winter is the most poetic of the seasons, if one is to judge by the number of poems written about it. "One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine-trees crusted with snow." And now we'll never be able to stop by woods on a snowy evening without thinking of the miles we have to go before we sleep, and such. (Frost wrote a lot of winter poems. Either he felt compelled to live up to his name, or it just was a cruel twist of fate.)

I do believe I've developed a "phantom scarf"; I keep getting the impression that I am wearing my scarf when I clearly am not.
 

14 December 2008: In Which Chesterton is Quoted
I'm done complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. (Even if there was a time when the holiday lived up to its noun, we stole the date from the pagans anyway. Which reminds me: a very merry Saturnalia to all my readers who celebrate it.) There's something in it, I should hope, beyond any petty advertisers. Chesterton, whom I really must read more of, has some wise words regarding the season. He notes that... well, let me just refer you to the whole bit, to be found here. Ahcchhmm. Chesterton notes that religion (unlike materialism, or even philosophy) is not about achieving happiness. It is rather about being alive. I shan't sum up any more; I just suggest you read him for yourself.
 

9 December 2008: In Which I Inadvertently Make Some Enemies, Probably
I wish to write here a few words that may offend some readers more inclined towards feminism.

It is often lamented that our society has a double standard regarding what is acceptable action for men and women. (Every day we come closer to ridding ourselves of it, it seems. But it is remarkably resilient, as are most cultural bugaboos.) Certain things are expected of women that are not expected of men. For example, it is commonly assumed that women—as a sex; I don't speak of individuals—are more patient, more gentle, and more accommodating. There is the tradition of the meek and docile housewife, be she from the Victorian era or from the 1950s. In those olden days a woman's chief priority was the wellbeing of her family. (This persists, albeit in a weakened form, today: single mothers are certainly more prevalent than single fathers. But perhaps that's merely due to the dismal fact of which gender actually produces a child.) Furthermore, women are still held to different sexual standards. This is proved by our lexicon as much as anything else: while we have a slew of (often quite wonderful) words for a promiscuous woman, there are no particularly good words for a promiscuous man. No, indeed; the very concept of promiscuity is alien to a depressing percentage of the male sex.

It is clear to everyone that something is wrong here. The most common feminist response is to condemn the double standards and insist that women be held to the same cultural guidelines as men. While this would achieve equality of a sort, it is most certainly not the best option. The problem is not the standards; it is the difference between women's standards and men's standards. Why call for women to be as prideful, or as impatient, or as debauched as men? Why not call for men to emulate the old models of acceptable 'female' behavior? Surely we'd be better off as families, as communities, as a nation, if everyone were expected to be equally mild, equally chaste, equally devoted to family. These are not feminine virtues; they are virtues, period. I lament our society's double standards. Not for the women, for much is expected of them; but for the men, who have been held to such a low standard.
 

8 December 2008: On Free Will (A Role-playing Exercise)

"I'm keeping my options open", we like to tell ourselves. But every day we are constricted by the myriad small decisions we must make. We are funneled into a certain life: to open the blinds, to walk to class, to wear a coat. (You may have done none of these things today. But what you have done is nevertheless irrevocable.) Perhaps we awake dwelling in possibility, but this dream soon yields to the only reality, what will be. A life is nothing more than the sum of each day, our thousands of instances of bowing to necessity. This is not as dreary as it sounds; even the great men of history lived thusly. Caesar crossed the Rubicon because it was inevitable that he do so. ("Let the die be cast", he said. But the act passed quickly from the subjunctive to the present to, now, the long past tense. It could not be otherwise.) All matters—salvation (or damnation), love (or indifference), integrity (or compromise)—all come down to the quotidian decisions of what is needful.

This is not to say we should abandon the concept of free will. (Ah: in a universe without free will, there is, of course, no should, only a was, an is, and a will be.) If free will is an illusion, it is a necessary illusion.

All one really needs to feel content is a good meal, if you ask me. Contrariwise, the quickest way to darkest pessimism about the human race and the world is to skip lunch. I suspect Borges simply needed a better diet.
 

2 December 2008: Lines, lines, lines
I wonder whether it's useful (or, at least, not harmfully useless) to think of a person's life in terms of a straight line, a finite line, stretching across time and space. There are other lines, of course, but they can be said to curve in relation to the one. (This is not a matter of egotism, but merely reflective of the fact that I can only speak for my own line, and you, presumably, for yours.) Lines may intersect, perhaps at sharp (violent?) angles, or they may run parallel to one another for years. The woman who made my lunchtime gyros today was one line, to cross mine one or twice and then go elsewhere. My college professors' lines have run parallel to mine for these three-and-some years, but shall soon wander away.

There are more implications to this metaphor; I must think of them.

Also: one of those lines (a religion teacher from way back last year ago) has some interesting thoughts. It must just be something about Danish theologians that grabs me, for some reason...
 

25 November 2008: The Finer Things
I hope you are one of those people who can take a peculiar pleasure in works of art, especially music and poetry. I'm never quite sure what to make of those who profess to have no interest in real art. Currently I've been enjoying Hopkins (again, but more deeply), Shakespeare (likewise), Pérotin, and Joanna Newsom (who is really quite excellent if you're prepared to come to terms with her voice: it's not exactly conventional, but powerful nonetheless. And her lyrics are finer poetry than any other living musician I know of.) All of these artists possess a rare gift of some kind or another, but their common factor is that they allow us (the reader, or listener) to transcend the ordinary world. In this respect I am mute; I cannot by means of this blog (that most un-transcendent of media!) convey anything like that to you. I must only hope you've experienced something like it.

There are, of course, similarities between artistic transcendence and spiritual transcendence. Indeed, they may overlap (as they do in Hopkins and Herbert, among others). In both there is the risk of addiction: we become so accustomed to going above the level of ordinary living that we hesitate to go back down again. Transcendence becomes an end unto itself, instead of merely a means to God. John of the Cross wrote about what he calls this "spiritual gluttony" (quite densely, I might add; but perhaps it's just the translation that's dense). Auden would agree, I think. There is his wise saying about all sins being addictive, with the terminal point of addiction as damnation.
 

24 November 2008: That time of year thou mayst in me behold
There's nothing quite like a pleasant Sunday drive. Yes indeed, a weekly post-missal vehicular perambulation hits the spot quite efficaciously. And there's a particular pleasure when the land being driven about feels like home. The wooded hills and farmland of Henry and rural Rock Island counties have a special appeal for me. And now, in this time of year, the land is unadorned but no less beautiful. One gets a sense of geography that's more difficult to achieve in the summer months: now it's easier to see the shape of the land, the cricks and streams and little rivers, all rushing down to the Father of Waters whose rolling will bear our rain down to the Gulf. (Seven dactyls and a tailless trochee, there; did you notice? Eh, I'll stick to prose.) It's the land, really, that reminds me how much I love the Quad Cities area, certainly not the people or the urban planning or the culture. Hmm.

The best thing about Fall, esp. late Fall when everything is bare, is that it makes us aware of how ephemeral even the best things are. All shall pass. Yet saints and poets remind us that the eternal glory of God (or, if my agnostic readers prefer, the Universe) is shown through these transient things. "This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long."
 

19 November 2008: Elsewhere
Mr Keillor enumerates the very real pleasures of winter in the midwest. (I wonder if his new book is any good? And what will he be writing his columns about when we have both a Democratic administration and congress in power? Somehow I doubt he'll refer to President Obama as the "Current Occupant".)

Also. By now, wildfires sweeping the mountains of California is nothing new. (It is, of course, exacerbated by imprudent policies which allow dead brush to accumulate, making fires worse when they do happen.) Mostly, it seems, the victims are people with too much money who built their McMansions in the wrong place. But there's also the (Anglican!) monks whose monastery burned down last week. They have a unique (and quite probably correct) perspective on things.
 

17 November 2008:
Now that we've had a week off school and a new term has started, everyone is pleasant again (or, at least, as pleasant as they get). It is good. But I wonder: why can't we all be like this all the time? Is it an excess of work that makes us unpleasant, or does that excess merely give us an excuse to stop pretending to be nice to others? Mebbe if we had less work we'd just find other reasons to be unpleasant.

Over the past few weeks I've been watching a documentary about the Carthusians called Into Great Silence (oder, auf Deutsch, "Die große Stille"). I've not watched it in one sitting because it's three hours long with no plot; like many European films I've seen, it is not telos-oriented. Rather, it's a meditative movie, one best approached appreciatively. Carthusians are even stricter than Trappists, living and praying in solitude and silence most of the time. (They don't follow the Rule of Benedict, having instead their own statutes.) Watching the film, one is struck by an air most of the monks have about them, one of earnest kindness and humor. I recommend the film highly.

Perhaps we'd all be truly nicer if we lived like monks. No, that wouldn't do, would it?
 

12 November 2008: City of the Big Shoulders

Illinois: Ain't it grand?
From the Ronald Reagan Tollway...

—Sufjan Stevens, "The Henney Buggy Band"

What strikes me most, though, about the City and its surroundings was the dreadful uniformity. Nowhere does one get a sense of the land that lies beneath the pavement: in a world of concrete and asphalt it is difficult to believe one is walking on what used to be a real place, with fields and hills and trees. The uniformity extends outwards to the suburbs; you know what I mean. (Locations such as Naperville and Aurora must of necessity be the antithesis of real communities; that's why people move to the suburbs, isn't it?) Even the people of Chicago share a sameness to them: the typical urbanite dresses and walks a certain way. I suggest that a certain disdain for disorder, for the organic, for the unexpected, is the surest sign of a contempt for nature. Beyond the microscopic level (that is, discounting crystals and snowflakes and such), nature abhors a grid far more than it abhors a vacuum.
 

4 November 2008: Veni, Advente
This time of year, between All Souls' Day and Advent, always seems to drag on the longest. Perhaps it's the weather (though here it's unseasonably, one might say unnaturally, warm). I suspect part of the problem is the hymns: besides a few good Thanksgiving ones, we're left to churn away at the same tunes of Ordinary Time that we've had since Pentecost. In any case, I have trouble waiting 'til Advent, which is a far more purposeful time of year (even if it has been hijacked by those Nativitist hawkers of unnecessariables).

Recently discovered a rather good web-comic, Wondermark, "an illustrated jocularity". It's entirely composed of old-timey things—perhaps my favorite category of things—referencing, for example, steam-powered robots, unsuccessful mustachioed entrepeneuers, and poems regarding plum-eatery. Worth a look-see.

Addendum, that evening: Well, the election's over. Good. In his concession speech we heard the old McCain (who was, ironically, a younger McCain), the classy one, the one undistorted by xenophobia, bigotry, and the dirty politics of Rove and his heirs. If only that McCain had been running all along. ... I'm not sure how Democrats will squander all this good will. I hope they accomplish some good things before that happens.
 

1 November 2008: Ave Democratia
I early-voted this afternoon. One of the unique advantages of living in Iowa is participating in the electoral process from its very beginning to its end: I was there at the first caucus (where my preferred candidate was not viable but my second choice won the state) and now have voted (incidentally, for a ticket comprised of my second and first choices at the caucus).

A few devoted readers of this web-log may recall that church I drove past a few years ago whose sign read "FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS GO TO HELL" (trenchant advice, no doubt). I recently drove past that sign again; now it pronounces, "PRAY FIRST, THEN VOTE". ... Whoever wins this coming election (as an entirely impartial observer I must maintain a front of neutrality, heh), there will doubtless be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Pride goeth before a fall, as they say. The Republicans have had eight years to ruin the country; let's give the Democrats their chance.
 

30 October 2008: Nietzsche is Dead
Today I paid a visit to a meeting of the Augustana Socratic Society. The discussion was Nietzsche (as presented in Alain de Botton's enjoyable The Consolations of Philosophy): specifically, his ideas about how good suffering is for us if we use it to our advantage. On the face of it, Nietzsche's idea of the redemptive power of suffering might sound very Christian. It isn't. For him, suffering is merely a necessary component in the struggle to become great. While it is true that all great men—let us agree for convenience's sake that we can objectively label certain persons, like Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, "great"—have undergone suffering, it is not true that suffering necessarily brings greatness. Indeed, there are far too many failures to count. (Well, perhaps Nietzsche was only addressing men who are capable of being the übermensch. In that case, the lot of us can sod off, I suppose.)

I find it entirely appropriate that the vast majority of Nietzsche's followers nowadays are adolescent males with poor social skills and (often) questionable hygiene. (Incidentally, I calculated the rate of virginity at the Socratic Society to be around 75%. Not that there's anything wrong with voluntary virginity, of course, but I suspect that in most of those fellows' cases it is very much involuntary. Just as Nietzsche's situation would be, I suppose, if he didn't have such ready access to brothels.) In exalting vices like greed and pride as means to achieve an end, Nietzsche's philosophy can produce nothing but a world of people very much like a certain sort of unpopular adolescent boy: grasping, inconsiderate, and glibly uncharitable. This world already exists: it is called the internet.
 

25 October 2008: It's also called "Ecclesiasticus"
One of today's readings in the lectionary comes from the fifteenth chapter of Sirach:

¹⁵If you choose, you can keep the commandments,
and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.
¹⁶He has placed before you fire and water;
stretch out your hand for whichever you choose.
¹⁷Before each person are life and death,
and whichever one chooses will be given.

Still going through The Cloister Walk, which is proving to be pretty rewarding. But it is not perfect. I recognize Norris's weaknesses because they are my own: a tendency to digress at length on uninteresting personal anecdotes, and an over-fondness for quotations from wiser authors. Both of these faults should have been amended by a good editor. Quibbles aside, The Cloister Walk has some enlightening passages. "Jeremiah as Writer: The Necessary Other" and "Celibate Passion" stand out as special chapters, so far.
 

23 October 2008: Nuns 'n' Such
Visited a Benedictine monastery (one with nuns. But don't call it a convent; they prefer the term "monastery") with my religion class today. It was a bit frustrating to be there for only an hour-and-a-half; there was no time to get a real sense of the atmosphere there. Or perhaps Benedictines are simply more worldly than the Trappists I have visited. If I may make a hasty and unfair summation, it seems there are two kinds of nuns: 1) the practically-minded, who seem surprisingly businesslike and unspiritual, and 2) the frankly eccentric, who seem out-of-place in this world. Perhaps the former appear so unspiritual because they're too busy worrying about the latter. Even in a monastery people must needs deal with the unpleasant realities of life: of making a living, of tolerating those we dislike, of discomfort and pain.

I should continue reading The Cloister Walk; I suspect Kathleen Norris has greater insights than I do. (She is published, after all.) What I'd really like to do is make another retreat to a monastery. In the meantime I left to make as monastic an existence as one can at such an institution as Augustana.
 

21 October 2008: On the Perils of Religious Instruction
In my religion class we're discussing the experiences of children taking their first communion. Well, that's what we're supposta be discussing; the conversation has centered on the religious education of children. How old is old enough to really understand the mysteries of faith? What's the difference between instruction and indoctrination? (Not much, unfortunately.) Certainly, seven- and eight-year-olds can't make an informed decision to believe; what faith they have is called 'childlike' for a reason, and mostly they're just receiving communion to take part more fully in their community of faith. But neither can a fourteen-year-old understand what he's getting into at confirmation. (Indeed, a large percentage of college freshmen arrive merely spouting the dogmas—be they religious, political, or economic—they learned at home.) From a Kierkegaardian perspective, religious faith must entail a conscious acceptance (and therefore a conscious recognition) of the Absurd. The problem with children is that they're unable (as are some adults) to recognize this; for the most part, their faith cannot amount to anything more than a passive acceptance of what information they're given. But that's not to say children shouldn't be given any religious instruction. (Well, I hope not.) I should hope that religion classes can give children a basis for deeper faith: they should then be encouraged to grow into a fuller understanding.

Don't misunderstand me; I don't mean to say that the basis of religion is knowledge. That's just another gnostic error. (They're simply full of errors, those gnostics, eh?) But there is an element of abstraction to faith that children simply are not capable of (if we're to believe Piaget). There's doubt, too. After all, doubt is the essence, not the opposite, of faith.
 

20 October 2008: Monkish Imagination
Recently started Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk, about her experience as an oblate at a Benedictine monastery. She writes of the way monastics tend to think, valuing "image over idea, the synthetic over the analytical... the intuitive and associative over the formal and prescribed." Monastic culture—and here we speak of the culture, not of a few outliers like Aquinas or Duns Scotus—is "more literary than speculative". Monks may contemplate a rose, or the moon, or God, but they realize that its true reality lies beyond their words. This appeals to me.

Currently listening to a CD ("Tabula Rasa") of some music of Arvo Pärt; it makes me sad. Sadness is at least preferable to the intolerable numbness of late. Even when one does try to view the world with a sacramental imagination, it can be difficult to break out of the mundane.
 

19 October 2008: Education: A Jeremiad
The other day I happened upon an essay by Thomas Merton, who has some worthwhile words regarding education. "The purpose of education", he writes, "is to show a person how to define himself authentically and spontaneously in relation to his world—not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of the individual himself." True education, then, makes us "better able to make a lucid and conscious use of [our] freedom. Basically, this freedom must consist first of all in the capacity to choose [our] own lives, to find [our]selves on the deepest possible level. A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions (in Pascal's sense) is simply a sham." One wonders whether Berry has read any Merton. Mobility is not true freedom, nor is an array of material distractions. There must be something more, and our education, if it is worth anything, must allow us to become aware of what more is out there.

In exercising real freedom we run "the risk of self-discovery. The function of a university"—like the function of a college such as Augustana, one hopes—"is, then, first of all to help the student to discover himself...

"To put it in even more outrageous terms, the function of the university is to help men and women save their souls and, in so doing, to save their society... from the hell of meaninglessness, of obsession, of complex artifice, of systematic lying, of criminal evasions and neglect, of self-destructive futilities." How has Augustana enabled us to save our souls? Have our lives gained greater meaning for being here? Or, perhaps, is Augustana setting an example of criminal neglect and self-destructive futility? It would be to easy for me to point to examples of the school's neglect of nature and of its self-destructive tendencies, especially considering what will happen when the oil finally runs out. I wish to consider instead the self-destructive tendencies harbored by Augustana students which are indulgently tolerated by the school: the three nights a week (at least) when one cannot go outside without hearing drunken hollering, the elevators used by people with perfectly good legs who cannot bear to use the stairs, the non-biodegradable containers offered to us so that we may eat "on the go". I cannot believe that institutional irresponsibility and personal irresponsibility are entirely unrelated.

That's not to say I haven't benefited enormously from being here. There are wise teachers to be heard and wise books in the library to be read (such as the one in which I found this Merton essay). But I fear for my classmates: how many of them are being be truly educated, in Merton's (correct) sense? One always wonders.
 

10 October 2008: Words, Words, Words
There is no question that the limits of one's vocabulary also limit one's thought processes. (An aside: "limit" as noun predates the use of "limit" as verb, but only by five years. Heh.) Merely discuss music theory with a philosopher, or theology with a scientist, or anything worthwhile with a sorority girl, and you will see my point: our ignorance of words determines our ignorance of the concepts (and even the truths) that lay within those words. Truth (with a big "T"), in this case, relies on something as simple as phonemes (or graphemes). I haven't read Wittgenstein, but I'm sure his theory of language has something to do with this.

Anyway, it has occurred to me that there are many words that we do not know. Some are to be discarded (though I happen to like "muliebrity"), while some should be eagerly sought. It'd be nice if we endeavored to create more words—not empty, unimportant words for more technology, but words for new concepts, for new places in the mind.

Today I was reflecting that fundamentalist Christians and militant atheists have much in common. Particularly, individuals of both kinds have a markèd lack of imagination. Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. cannot believe in a God who cannot be empirically proven. Biblical literalists, taking Luther's sola scriptura principle to its logical absurd conclusion, cannot believe in a God except the one portrayed by the words of the Bible (which is, often as not, the King James Version, which is apparently the only acceptable version for some silly reason). Neither Hitchkins (heh) nor religionists possess the necessary imagination (that is to say, the art of belief) to envision a God great enough to be God. A correspondent has recommended me Lewis's essay "Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare", which I really oughtta pick up sometime. In it Lewis informs us that "Reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning." God is not so important as a veritable fact (certainly, millions live without acknowledging the idea of a God), as a way to give meaning to our lives. Such meaning is thus contingent on a healthy imagination.

I suggest that it is beneficial to develop the ability to imagine; that is, to think beyond words and their inherent rigid logic. A Zen koan is but an attempt to do so: reading later Merton is much the same experience. It may yet be the mystics who lead us out of this modern disease of philosophical (and consumerist—surely the two are related) materialism.
 

6 October 2008: In the Devil's Territory
Wendell Berry came to Augustana today; it was good. But I was mortified by the idiot college students who came to his lecture because they were required to and then slept through it. I rarely get angry, but I very nearly picked a fight with the philistine sitting next to me (alas, he left early, depriving me of satisfaction). What brought Mr Berry to a place like Augustana, where, with few exceptions, we are urged to become "upwardly mobile", to "go places"? The modern college is the cradle of the attitude that has destroyed our communities and fostered the "global economy" for the past fifty years. Berry knows this, of course; his books taught it to me. But I fear that Berry influenced few business majors to wake up (literally!) and see the stupidity and wastefulness and downright wrongness of their chosen careers. At least there were a few of us students who appreciated him. (I got to shake his hand, but I was so gushing with admiration that I fear I embarrassed Dr Peters, who had introduced me to Berry's work and was standing right next to him.)

In any case, Mr Berry is one of the few people alive today who is really worth listening to, and it was an honor to have him here. (An aside: when he discussed religion, he turned markedly melancholy for some reason, commenting that he is not a particularly religious man. Though not all professedly "religious" people have such reverence for nature, don't all people who are so reverent turn out to be religious, or at least spiritual? Hmm. I'm not sure. I wonder how Mr Berry's philosophy of life—itself so very correct—and his religion intersect.)
 

29 September 2008:
If you're the curious sort, you may wonder how that virtue experiment last week went. It was, for the most part, a failure. That is, I was unable to go even a day without an offense against the particular virtue of the day. At least some were a bit easier than others: temperance, for example, comes relatively easily, but that is only because I have never greatly enjoyed overeating or alcohol. (I agree with G.K. Chesterton in that we should only drink when life is good; if we drink to forget our troubles then something is wrong.) Humility was the most difficult; this may not surprise you. It is so common to confuse humility with modesty that it's rare to see—much less achieve—real humility these days.

Today is the Feast of Michael and All Angels, by the way. An old-timier name for it is Michaelmas, which is a good word I should endeavor to bring back into use somehow. I'm not quite sure what to make of angels (esp. "guardian" ones); the idea is sentimental enough that one is tempted to place it in the company of other rather silly superstitions held devoutly by some Christians. But I cannot say.
 

21 September 2008: Ordo Virtutum
O, how insufferable the morally superior! Take Benjamin Franklin, for example. He devised a system for practicing virtues. This, in itself, is a good and commendable idear, except his stated goal was "to live without committing any Fault at any time". (Ha! "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." I shouldn't be so harsh on ol' Ben in particular, though, I suppose; such hubris is only typical of Enlightenment-era intellectuals. And their modern-day descendants? ...) Franklin's virtues are designed more for good business practice than true morality, but they're a good example to emulate, nonetheless. With the spirit of self-improvement in mind, I have resolved to practice a particular virtue each day, in hopes of becoming insufferably morally superior myself. (Well, one hopes not. Moral snobbery is just as irritating as other forms of snobbery, but at least virtue is a good thing, in and of itself.) Rather than formulate my own list of virtues, which would doubtless play to my strengths and minimize my weaknesses, I shall opt for the seven virtues of medieval Christianity: Humility, Kindness, Patience, Diligence, Generosity, Abstinence, and Chastity (perhaps the least popular nowadays). Each of these has a complementary vice, which it would likewise behoove me to practice avoision of. (<= Most awkward sentence yet!) I shall assign each to a day of the week, beginning tomorrow, Monday, which shall be dedicated to humility, the "queen of the virtues". (Why the virtues are necessarily feminine is beyond me. Are vices correspondingly male? One doubts.) And so on, through the week. If you happen to catch me failing at a day's virtue, you'll win a prize. Or something. Well, at least this will be an interesting experiment.
 

17 September 2008: A Few Words Regarding Ethics
Unlike a large number of people (among them, a depressing number of politicians who "don't blink"), often I feel a need to reëvaulate my actions. Of late, I find myself rethinking acts of kindness. I concede that hardly any kind act is done purely of altruistic motives; but even admitting that, some motives are better than others. What is kindness done out of boredom? What is a kind act performed simply for the novelty of it? The pure idealist would tell me that it is not, actually, an act of kindness at all. But Aristotle reminds us that ethics are habits; if one habitually acts kindly, it matters very little to me whether he truly "means" it. I like the idea of Ethics as a practical discipline; each day we have the chance for self-improvement, brought on not by idle philosophizing but by cultivating those admirable habits of kindness, goodness, &c., &c.

(You are aware that "&c." is equivalent to "Etc.", I hope? The ampersand is, after all, just an altered Et...)

Presently I'm taking a class on Wagner's Ring cycle, which is based heavily on Germanic mythology. What strikes me especially is the different ideals of those barbarous pagans. Valhalla, the Germanic paradise, is reserved not for the "ethical", but only for the most valorous in battle. This is only natural, I suppose, in a warrior culture such as that of the Germanic tribes, but it really is quite different from the Christian concept of morality (which, we mustn't forget, has roots as much in Greece as in Judea). The Germanic warrior is justified by his battle prowess; in this case, might actually does make right. What is Christianity but a religion for weaklings, for ninnies, for pansies, compared with the valiant ethos of the pagans? The idea that the Christian Godhead's "strength is made perfect in weakness" is anathema to any real fighter. I haven't read much Nietzsche (who was "stupid and abnormal", anyway, according to Tolstoy), but it seems his philosophy is much more in touch with Germanic roots than any Middle-eastern import. Even nowadays, many young American males (who surely haven't read Nietzsche!) strive to be part of a culture of machismo, with all its attendant ills. It's no coincidence that church attendance rates are ever so much higher among women than men: to be a "man" is to go without such Christian virtues as self-control, gentleness, and, above all, true charity.

The real significance of this, I think, is that the basis of Christian moral doctrine is not only obvious platitudes. We, having grown up in a culture still steeped in Christian thought, are inclined to dismiss its teachings as self-evident. But that ain't necessarily so.
 

10 September 2008: Whom Would Wendell Berry Vote For?
I've been thinking more about this blasted election that's approaching so rapidly. While I have every intention of voting for Obama/Biden, I am quite aware that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are particularly qualified to solve our real problems; it's just that the Democrats are a bit less wrong. This whole Palin affair is just pandering to the Republican base, dressed up as a "bold" "decision" to foster "change". I'd say it's odd for an incumbent party to be running against itself, but then, these are the people who'd have us believe that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. Here's another chart for you, to sum up:

Party:	Democrats	Republicans
Stance on Issues:	Somewhat Deluded: "Okay, let's drill just a little, then."	Severely Deluded: "100 more years in Iraq!"
Candidate:	Articulate Elitist	Mean Old Coot
Vice-Candidate:	Plagiarizing Loudmouth	Book-banning Zealot
Evil?	Inadvertently	Mostly

I've also been thinking more about Dante, lately. (I really must pick up the Sayers translation sometime.) Did you notice he puts the betrayers in the lowest pit of Hell? That is, the greatest punishment is for those who endanger human community by breaking the bonds (of family, of citizenship, of allegiance) that tie us. With this in mind, which party is worse? The Democrats, who encourage "upward mobility" and shun the backward notion of tradition (not to mention those ignorant hayseeds who "cling to religion")? Or the Republicans, who have done their best to encourage an economy based on greed and one-upmanship and sent our young people off to die in an irrelevant war? Nobody's hands are clean; it almost makes me want to vote for a third-party candidate. Though that might be the truly moral thing to do, I must concede to reality and vote for the lesser of two evils. We simply can't have another four years of "faith-based" "leadership".
 

5 September 2008: Hervest Is Icumen In
Finally, it's starting to feel like Autumn again. (Incidentally, did you know that the we English-speakers used to call the season "harvest", but opted for the Latinate Autumn as we became more urbanized and removed from actual food production? Perhaps we'd be better off reverting to the older usage.) This time of year is, by nearly any criterion, my favorite. It inspires that wonderful feeling of Sehnsucht that Lewis was so keen on. All the best seasonal poetry is autumnal. And, lest we forget, it's harvest time: there are few things as pleasant as an apple orchard in September and early October. (Actually, there are few things as pleasant as an apple orchard at any time of the year, but now it is both aesthetically fulfilling and practical, if'n you happen to like apples.)

I recently read Empire Falls, by Richard Russo. It was pretty good. Russo is a bit more fond of clichés than I'd like, but he juggles multiple sub-plots with ease, and his portraits of small-town characters are excellent. All the same, it seems to be Russo's conclusion that the only hope for citizens of small towns is to move away, or to invite outside investment in the form of mini-malls and condominiums ("condominia"?). Surely we can do better than that, can't we?
 

29 August 2008: Miscellanea
What we need more of is old-fashioned insults. Why simply swear at someone when you could call them a "lackwitted dunderwhelp"? Or an "improvident slattern"? Surely there must be a way to make a program that could do this. Am I alone in desiring such a thing?

On an entirely unrelated note, the website for Augustana's Local Culture periodical is up, albeit probably unfinished. But I look forward to reading it (and perhaps contributing); I certainly support the idea of a local culture. (How incongruous that we use the medium of the internet to support such a thing!)

Furthermorely unrelated: I wonder what to think about McCain's choice for vice-president. I'm afraid it might be a good one, at least on the superficial level that apparently wins elections. But where will we be when McCain's melanoma metastasizes and we're left with a 44-year-old mother of five with no practical experience? (Conceivably, we'd still be better off than we are now.)

Also: Anagrams | Pointy Hats | English-American Dictionary
 

26 August 2008: The Protestantism Craziness Chart
In the last entry I mentioned "Protestants of varying levels of craziness", but rather than insult a lot of people generally I'd prefer to insult them specifically. Here is the fruit of my efforts, the Protestantism Craziness Chart. Perhaps someday I'll regret this, but it seems like a great idea at the time.
 

23 August 2008: How do you solve a problem like Martin Luther?
Finally I am once again cozily ensconced in a dormitory room, and it's much better than "transitional living"; in matters of housing I will prefer guaranteed consistency over purported freedom any day. Best of all, I've a single, on a "substance-free" floor. Of course, all the floors are in theory "substance-free", but apparently the freedom from substance is less illusory on this particular floor than on the others. I have a south-facing window—I do enjoy south-facing windows—that looks out directly on the sidewalk. It's like having a front porch, except that people can't come in from the outside. (So I suppose it's better than a front porch.) Yes, these two terms before I leave for Vienna should be satisfactory.

I've been thinking about this whole sola fide thing lately. Luther was big on it, of course, and along with him most of the other Protestants (of varying levels of craziness). We can all admit that strict legalism is no basis for a (good) religious system: "the letter kills, but the spirit brings life." But if belief alone is the means of salvation, this suggests other difficulties. Certain Lutherans (all of the Unhappy sort) are prone to deep soul-searching regarding their faith: how can we know if we're believing correctly, in terms both of quality and quantity? In what must we believe?—the creeds?—the sacraments? (And how many sacraments are we to number?) That is, how orthodox must our belief be to count? In The Last Battle Lewis suggests that it is merely the sincerity of belief that matters; since we are by nature fallible creatures the Deity will give us transfer credits if we bet on the wrong horse. This is rather comforting, especially considering—regardless of which faith is "correct", if there is one—how many people happen to be following the wrong faith.

I'd just as soon say that both faith and works are necessary, not least because I fancy myself a pragmatist. (Faith should compel us to act, shouldn't it?) Not that I suggest we all go out and buy some papal indulgences.
 

22 August 2008: Mnemosyne's Architecture
There's nothing quite like discussing things whilst taking a long walk (or, when one is inclined more to Wanderlust and wastefulness, a car-ride). I always remember such conversations far better because I associate each topic—often even particular sentences—with a visual location. Quintilian describes a system like this in his Institutio oratoria: we are to plan out a house in our mind, assigning to each room objects as signifiers of something to be memorized. This so called "method of loci" came to be quite popular with medieval philosophers, among them Augustine and Thomas Aquinas; the Puritans condemned it for its propensity to bring up "absurd and obscene thoughts", so it must be good.

Where was I indulging my peripatetic nature, you may ask? Why, in Geneseo, Illinois, a nice town made all the better by the fact that I don't live there. If I lived there I'm sure I'd eventually tire of its Rockwellian quaintness and insular-minded folk, but as it is, it's quite pleasant to visit. It's good to know that there are still places in the world where the trees are bigger than the houses. (Yet there are large, ugly, new buildings on the outskirts of town, many left empty by the souring economy: even Geneseoans will worship at the altar of Progress. I suppose in another twenty years the place will be unrecognizable, which is a shame. Tolkien had his West Midlands, ruined by industrialization. Perhaps I'll have my Geneseo, ruined by three-car garages, strip-malls and Wal-mart.)
 

19 August 2008: Dark Grace
The first few chapters of Wise Blood had stirred in me some ruminations about grace. Having finished that book, as well as "A Good Man is Hard to Find", it is apparent that this concept is the key to O'Connor's writings. Her grace, however, is not that pleasant notion we modern Christians are so inclined to think of: it is often just as violent as—well, what is the opposite of grace? We complain of the "problem of evil", but O'Connor, like the Old Testament writers, accepts certain evils as part of the divine mystery. Unpleasantness and violence, unpleasant and violent though they be, may be the means of achieving salvation. (Donne understood this as well: "Batter my heart, three-personed God"...) This is upsetting to all the shallower types of Christians, as well as many others. Why else would we be so confounded by Job?

In any case, I can only recommend Flannery O'Connor's writings most vigorously. They are not pleasant; they are far too good to be merely pleasant.
 

9 August 2008: Oh, that Hazel Motes
In retrospect I've decided to call this my "Summer of Southern Literature", though in fact I've only read a third of A Confederacy of Dunces and a few chapters of Wise Blood (I keep hearing good things about Flannery O'Connor; how could someone with such a memorable name not be interesting?). But I do intend to finish them, having almost two weeks of leisure left. Having not finished either, I am not particularly qualified to say much yet. (That's never stopped me before, of course.) Dunces is hilarious in its portrayal of absurdly sincere characters. Wise Blood is something else entirely. Its protagonist (or anti-hero, perhaps?), Hazel Motes (a he, mind you), militantly denies that Christ died for his sins, as he denies that he has any sins at all. He has some sort of fixation on his lack of sin—which is to say, he is actually fixated on his sinfulness.

Some will argue that this emphasis on sin is a symptom of all the wrong kinds of religion, those backward beliefs that hold us back from being well-adjusted, unrepressed free selves. Indeed, to be fixated on one's sins can be quite unhealthy: for one thing, if you're not careful your children may end up like Søren Kierkegaard. But the opposite extreme is at least as unhealthy, if not worse. (The ability to do whatever we please without shame—is that true freedom? Bah.) I have argued, and shall probably continue to argue, that sin is a necessary component of any good theology. I am very fond of Happy Lutherans, but I cannot countenance it when they omit sin entirely: we need it as much as we need redemption. O felix culpa, and all that. Likewise, George Herbert recognizes that "the fall shall further the flight in me" (with a lovely bit of alliteration there, of course). Grace is the word here: without un-merit, there is no unmerited love, that ultimate miracle, "the love that moves the sun and other stars", as Dante tells us.
 

27 July 2008: Classickes of Englyshe Word-crafte
What's not to like about 17th-century English poetry? The profound metaphorae, the striking religious imagery, the bawdy love-poems, the charmynglie inconstantte spellynges... it's all very good. (And I must note that often all four attributes are to be found in the same poem: some of the best metaphors and religious images are to be found cheek-by-jowl with awfully bawdy stuff. And yes, it's all spelt siemingley at randomme.) My favorite poets of the period are all rather different; you see, I'm enough of a dilettante that I need not confine myself to the metaphysical poets or the cavaliers or early modern proto-feminists. (Besides, the early modern proto-feminists aren't particularly good anyway. I don't claim that women are intrinsically worse at anything. It just so happens that all the greatest writers of this period—and many other periods—were men. I make no judgment, but we mustn't deny simple facts.) John Donne had a fascinating theology of the body, and perhaps the most outrageous metaphors: if his Holy Sonnet XIV doesn't simultaneously enlighten and offend you, you're not paying attention. Robert Herrick was a genial priest with an eye for the ladies. There is Ben Jonson, whose epitaphs are perhaps unmatched in their poignancy. And finally, my favorite, George Herbert: his The Temple approaches, at moments, the sublime.
 

24 July 2008: The Four Loves: Affection
Lewis classifies affection (στοργη) as one of the four loves. This is interesting. Would you put simple affection in the same league with the "higher" ideals of friendship, eros and charity? I'm not sure I would. But Lewis does, and perhaps for good reason. Affection is not idealized, and in fact it is admirable for its very lack of scruple: it is the least discriminating of loves. We read that "almost anyone can become an object of affection; the ugly, the stupid, even the exasperating." (It is statements like this that remind me how reasonable Lewis is: the man recognizes and admits that indeed some people are ugly, stupid and exasperating. I loathe that sort of political correctness—itself actually a mixture of pity and contempt—that will not admit the obvious.) To love a person with affection, we certainly need not be compatible with them. We don't even have to like them, and this is enormously freeing. Affection is a humble love, which puts on no airs; as Paul writes of charity, it "is not puffed up". And yes, affection and true charity are alike in their acceptance of a person regardless of flaws. But Lewis is adamant that we cannot love with affection alone, even though it may serve as a foundation for other loves. Affection is imperfect in that it is what Lewis calls a "need-love": it expects something of the other. King Lear loved his daughters with affection, perhaps, but he demanded that they return his love. Affection is the most "natural" of loves, but we must never make the mistake of assuming that we somehow inherently deserve it from others. The Beatles proclaim that all we need is love, but if they are referring to a need-love, that demands as much as it gives, it will never be enough.
 

20 July 2008: On the Dichotomy of "Educated" versus "Uneducated"
It is disconcerting, meeting old high-school acquaintances who haven't since gone off to college. The thing is, they haven't changed hardly at all, and they remember my name far better than I remember theirs. (I suspect that even the thickest of them have noticed this.) In several cases something rather strange happens, what I like to call the "Ligeia effect". (I have mentioned this before, but since I think it deserves a name I shall try to propagate one.) In my mind, many of those high-school acquaintances—neither friends nor enemies but mostly just background characters—have been subsumed by other people I've met. I mean they've been replaced: all associations I had with one person transfer to the other. Often it's just because the replacer reminds me of the replaced. But in any case I find myself attributing characteristics of one to the other, and vice versa, which leaves me confused and socially awkward in their company.

College is probably a good thing. It certainly has provided me with a different perspective on the world, and has opened my eyes to grander things. But what shames me is that those old classmates who haven't gone to college are often far more humble and approachable than those who have; they haven't learned to put on airs. Must we trade humility for knowledge? I should hope not. Cleverness for the sake of being clever is no virtue, and it becomes tiresome. (Let me be the first to admit that I am a beastly hypocrite in this regard, though, in my defense, I sometimes get tired of myself.)

It is in the sphere of religion (not the "religious sphere"; I'm not discussing Kierkegaard) that there is perhaps the greatest difference between the college-educated and the non-college-educated. In a congregation dominated by the former (and oh yes, I do believe people of a certain education level will flock together), a conciliatory gospel of tolerance and understanding is paramount. In a congregation dominated by the latter, the virtues of faith and steadfastness are emphasized. Neither situation is perfect. In my experience, the former may profess to welcome all, but the parishioners often keep their distance from the poor and downtrodden that Christians are called to serve. The latter tend towards doctrinaire prejudices. What we need is more people like Dorothy Day.

While I'm (implicitly) speaking ill of dogmatism, let me refer you to two interviews with people who do the same yet are far more articulate than I: James Carse—who, like myself, compares saints to poets—and Karen Armstrong, a former nun with some very interesting thoughts indeed.
 

16 July 2008: Lightning-bugs & Metaphysics
Another rehearsal tonight; the show's improving, though I still wonder why theater directors seem to prefer putting everything together at the last minute. Perhaps you should come and see the show. (I did mention it's Children of Eden, right? Not an excellent show, but at least it's mostly through-sung, which makes it seem shorter.) Driving home, the air smelled of bonfires and the coming rain. Lightning-bugs hit the car window. A fluorescent smear: quite a beautiful death, for a bug. Though the moon was obscured by clouds, four stars of Cassiopeia were visible. Are these little things—the smell before it rains, the glow of lightning-bugs and stars—the components of transcendence? (Well, what else is there? Conceding that transcendence exists, which it does, we can experience it either via the material world or through more, erm, metaphysical means. Is the "transcendence" of a Mahler symphony or of a sunset the same thing as the transcendence of religious experience? I'm not certain. It's a good question, though.)
 

14 July 2008: More matter, with less art
(Fret not, dear reader; the discussion of Lewis will continue at another time.)

If there is anything that proves to me I am an adult—or at least closer to adulthood than ever before—it is that I can no longer sleep well. Of course, both ill sleep and adulthood have their benefits; after all, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. But one sometimes regrets the loss of innocence, be it intellectual or spiritual. Why yes!—we can lose our intellectual innocence. Take Dante, or Shakespeare: we can never regain the experience of reading them for the first time. The singularly unfortunate thing about this is that, chances are, we weren't paying enough attention the first time; perhaps it was even involuntary. Has there ever been an intelligent man to have never read, to have never even heard of the Commedia, or Hamlet, until his majority? Such a man would have a unique opportunity to enjoy a work of genius with no preconceptions, no misconceptions. Happy that man! But he doesn't exist.

Then there is spiritual loss of innocence. You have experienced this; we have all eaten the apple. (I find the idea of original sin rather unfair. Does God really have to stack the deck against us? Besides, we have proven that we need no original sin when we commit plethora upon plethora of further sins. It amounts to the same thing in the end, anyway.) The worst thing about this is that we can never be sure of our motivations again. After all, "there is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive." I myself have found this to be a major stumbling block in trying to do anything good, for I know there's always an ultimately selfish reason I could attribute the actus bonus to. But oh well.

Currently I'm in the pit for a production of Children of Eden, which could raise some of these points but doesn't. It fails to provide any insight into Eve's choice to eat the forbidden fruit, but recasts Adam's decision as "what he did for love" (ugh): rather than remain in the garden, he chooses to follow Eve because of his feelings for her. A different perspective is that of Philip Pullman, who recasts the Fall as the abandonment of ignorance for knowledge. It's an interesting idea, and certainly attractive in its way. Why, after all, would God want to keep us in the dark, albeit happy? Perhaps in the garden Adam counted himself king of infinite space; but did he have bad dreams?

(While I'm throwing in all these Hamlet allusions, I must mention that I recently saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and loved it. Tom Stoppard is a genius, in his way.)
 

8 July 2008: The Four Loves: A Preface
Lewis (Clive Staples, that is), being the scholarly fellow he is, begins his The Four Loves with a quote from Donne's Litany:

That our affection kills us not, nor dye.

His essay is organized into four chapters, each based on a Greek word for love: στοργη ("affection">, φιλια ("friendship"), έρως (being in love—certainly not the same thing as lust), and αγαπη ("charity", what the Pope calls caritas). There was no Sapir-Whorf hypothesis when Lewis wrote the book, of course, but it's worth considering as meta-commentary. What if the Greeks had five words for love? Would he have written another chapter?

By and by I'd like to discuss each of the chapters, as they're all worth a look-see. Lewis gets an awful lot right, as he often does, though some points merit further discussion or elucidation.
 

2 July 2008: John Adams (the President, not the Composer)
What with the Fourth fast approaching, there's a plethora of television programs about the men who founded our nation. Yesterday I saw part of a rather good one about John Adams (and his wife). In the popular imagination it's hard to compare Adams to Jefferson; after all, there's no impressive Adams monument, and he doesn't have his head carved on any mountainsides. But in many ways it is easier to relate to Adams: rather than being born of wealth, he worked for his living. He married a remarkable woman who was his intellectual (and, perhaps, had it been allowed in that era, his political) equal. He opposed mob rule before the revolution, even defending the British soldiers in the so-called "Boston Massacre". He was level-headed, and quite certainly less of a hypocrite than Jefferson (who... well, you know all about his slaves, especially Sally Hemings, I suppose). All during his presidential career Adams had to put up with feelings of inferiority, following the hallowed Washington and preceding the vaunted Jefferson. He had to put up with the slander and ad hominem attacks that his rivals (esp. Jefferson) wrote—or paid to have written—about him. He refused to plunge the nation into outright war, even though popular opinion called for it; indeed, had he declared war he probably would've won a second term.

And yet, in many ways Adams was quite unlikeable. He had a massive ego and a nasty temper. He opposed Jefferson's vision of a nation of gentleman farmers—had that worked out, perhaps we'd all be living like Wendell Berry. He unconstitutionally suspended civil liberties. I'm not certain what we should think about John Adams; even after two centuries it's hard to decide whether his plusses outweigh, are outweighed by, or balance his minuses ("mini"?). But in any case he makes for an interesting PBS documentary.
 

30 June 2008: Whither Salinger?
Went rug-shopping with my grandmother today; understood what Thoreau meant about a life of "quiet desperation". There's so little love in the world: it is entirely absent from shopping malls and outlet stores, where dead-eyed clerks perfunctorily tell us to have nice days and our fellow shoppers measure the happiness of their lives by the amount they save on fabric softeners. (It is merely a step away from measuring out our lives with coffee spoons; Prufrock was as prescient as he was neurotic.)

Due to my leisurely pace and frequent pauses, it was only today—appropriately, I think—that I finished The Catcher in the Rye. It's much better once you've finished it. That is, you only really understand what Salinger's getting at by the time you've read the last few chapters. Holden Caulfield is right: the phoniness of modern man is indeed intolerable. There are many good reasons to be depressed. Salinger's great cop-out, of course, is that he only hints at alternatives. What, indeed, shall we do? In Lost in the Cosmos (which I have already suggested you obtain), Walker Percy discusses the freedom of the "ex-suicide"; he may be on to something. Another alternative, proposed by such thinkers as Merton and Kathleen Norris, is, of course, the monastery. That may be rather anti-climactic. We must note, though, that "[t]he mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." Hmm.
 

29 June 2008 (Festival of Sts. Peter & Paul):
Today I began a new job, at Trinity Lutheran (ELCA) in Moline. They have an excellent instrument—a beautiful instrument. For the next two months, I shall be no itinerant organist, but rather an interim organist there. (One tires of being an itinerant organist. It is rather like being a prostitute—or, at least, what I imagine being a prostitute would be like. Or, at least, a prostitute working only on Sunday mornings. Surely there is such a prostitute somewhere in the world...) It's a good congregation; this morning I was mobbed by crowds of nice old church ladies. And since they're happy Lutherans (ELCA, that is), it's a pleasanter atmosphere than the strictness of the Missouri synodians, who refuse Eucharist to their visitors (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:29) and speech to their women (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:34). Whitewashed sepulchres! I might better understand the Missouri Synod's emphasis on particular Bible verses if it took all verses equally seriously, like the proscriptions against planting corn next to soybeans (cf. Leviticus 19:19 and divorce (cf. Romans 7:2-3—how are all these adulteresses somehow tolerable?) As it is, I cannot understand their cherry-picking. Consistency is paramount! The ELCA attitude is a far more forgiving one, and, I daresay, a kinder, more Christian one (cf. Matthew 9:10-13, in which we see Jesus referencing Hosea, who actually married a prostitute. What is it about me and prostitutes today?).

But, ah, yes, the services this morning. They went well, though I preferred and shall continue to prefer the traditional liturgy to the contemporary, even if it's relatively good contemporary stuff. A wise man whom I know once said that contemporary Christian "music" is what happens when bad theology and bad music have sex. That's quite true.
 

14 June 2008: "Let the many islands be glad"
When the day comes that I decide where I will live, I do believe I shall opt for a town or small-sized city. Country life has its (many) benefits, but I cannot stand having to drive to get anywhere; I would prefer to live within walking distance of anything I need. I visited a city park today with friends, and I wish I could do so more often. Perhaps I've been holed up at home too long, but I actually felt a sort of contentment seeing other people: instead of being irritated by their complacency and thoughtlessness, I appreciated seeing other people. (Yes, I must've been holed up at home too long.) I suppose it is good practice, going out in public and not being irritated by everyone. Perhaps I am de-crankifying a bit. (That verb is based on the root cranky, which itself derives from crank, from the Old English cranc, in turn from the Proto-Germanic base krank, from which modern German gets its adjective krank, which has altered to mean "sick". Add on the morphemes de-, -fy, and -ing, and hey-presto! you've got a new word. Morphology is grand in the ways it allows us to create non-words that nonetheless any competent English speaker would understand—even if they have no idea what the word "morphology" means...)

Yesterday I saw the film Diarios de motocicleta, which I rather liked, despite its unabashedly over-sympathetic portrait of Che Guevara. (No quiero decir que él no tenía razón respecto a la pobreza y a la explotación de latinoamericanos, sino que sus medios fueron violentos, y creo que hemos que luchar por la resistencia no violenta. La matanza solo engendra más matanzas.) Moreover, there is some wonderful cinematography in the film; it has only increased my desire to travel to Argentina and Chile. Patagonia is one of the many out-of-the-way places in the world I'd love to visit. The Southern hemisphere has more than its share of such empty, unspoilt places, like New Zealand, the Falklands (Islas Malvinas), and those mysterious islands of the Southern Ocean. (That link is fascinating—worth an hour's exploration, if you ask me.) The Greeks put the garden of the Hesperides in the far western ocean, but if it is anywhere, it is in one of those forgotten corners of the Southern hemisphere.
 

10 June 2008: Holden Caulfield Was Right
I'm in another pit orchestra (if you can call it that) for another community theatre musical (you probably can call it that) this summer. We're doing The Sound of Music, which isn't actually a very good musical; it's a bit too precious—I use the word in the sense of "obviously contrived to charm"—and the orchestration in the score we're using is simply awful. Most of the pit musicians (if you can call them that) are high schoolers, most of whom I find insufferable. High schoolers are now yet another group of people the majority of which I cannot understand. In a few years I suppose I'll feel the same way about undergraduates—which, at present, seems unfortunate.

One of the several books I'm reading at the moment is The Catcher in the Rye. I'm not sure I like it (I'm halfway done and nothing's really happened yet), but I can relate to the narrator's feelings of alienation. There is such a gulf between me and most groups of people in the world—we may now add high schoolers, for example—that I hold out very little hope to relate to individuals at all. There are a precious (that is, valuable) few people with whom we can have worthwhile conversations, but these are rare, and perhaps getting rarer. Even among those few, there is a barrier: I cannot truly know you, nor you me. Something—I don't know what it is—prevents complete and utter communion of two souls, even in marriage. (Lutheran theologian James B. Nelson argues in his book Embodiment that physical relations are the closest thing we can get to true communion; I wouldn't know, but even if that's the closest thing, it is not the real thing. It certainly seems that even long-married couples never know each other completely. There are, of course, people who can never give themselves fully to another person in a relationship, but even among fully open and giving relationships I suspect there is some sort of divide between two people.) Maybe we are supposed to take delight in the unsolvable mystery another person provides us with. Mostly, I just despair that nobody can ever meet another individual in this world and fully know them or be known by them: we're all doomed to remain strangers, no matter what we do.
 

6 June 2008: Greetings from Aledo
Went to the Aledo Rhubarb Festival today. It was not entirely discouraging (despite the lack of rhubarb; it's been a bad year). For one thing, there was a surprisingly large number of young people there; the community of Aledo (pop. 3,620) is not yet so dead that the young people don't take part in community events. That's not to say I have no reservations, though: the first thing one sees upon entering town is a Wal-Mart. (Apparently, what with the economy doing as well as it's been doing, people have been shopping more at big-box stores such as Wal-Mart. This particular company flaunts its "commitment" to "communities" in the form of sponsorship of after-school activities and cleaning up public parks and other things like that. But I—and thinkers far wiser than myself—would argue that real communities are built on something more than children's sports teams: they are, whether we like it or not, built on something as common and as coarse as commerce. People need a livelihood to live, no matter how many free baseball uniforms their children receive from Wal-Mart. Since Wal-Mart only provides half as many jobs as it takes from a town, it's certainly not doing Aledo—or Davenport, or my hometown of Geneseo—any favors.)

But the Rhubarb Festival was enjoyable, anyway. This Sunday is the Strawberry Festival in Long Grove, and apparently it's been a good year for strawberries...
 

4 June 2008: Wouldn't you just die without Mahler?
The last week or so I've fallen into a not-uncomfortable routine: up by eight, eat breakfast; spend day reading, browsing the intranet, watching movies, playing Crusader Kings and Wii Sports (according to which, I am 2/3 of the way towards being a professional boxer. Huh); every few evenings have some Baileys (which, unfortunately, lacks the apostrophe; it must be an Irish thing: both Baileys and Finnegans Wake...); read some Calvin & Hobbes, fall asleep before eleven or so. It's not exactly the lifestyle I'd be reminiscing about if I live long enough to make it to the nursing home (heaven forbid), but there are worse ways to live.

Currently listening to Mahler's Fifth Symphony; it is not just a symphony, it's a microcosm of all human experience. (Needless to say, it is eminently successful as art.) It seems nothing was easy for poor Mahler, but, like many other great artists, he turned his struggles into something larger than those problems, something larger than the man himself. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should listen to some Mahler sometime.
 

31 May 2008: Rainstorms and Aesthetics
We just had a violent late-afternoon storm, but the sun is shining through the scattered clouds now. Water droplets are glistening on the outside of the window. It's beautiful. You wouldn't know it from reading this, of course; I'm not enough of an artist to portray this beauty to you, my reader. That's what art is for, you know: to translate the beauty of the world into another medium, be it a painting or a composition or a poem (or even prose).

There's still no excuse to discuss aesthetics, though. Any discussion of aesthetics is brought to nothing when we actually consider that which is beautiful. Again I refer to our old friend Borges. In La rosa amarilla he describes the revelation of a poet upon his deathbed: "Marino saw the rose, as Adam had seen it in Paradise, and he realized that it lay within its own eternity, not within his words..." I sometimes wonder if much of philosophy and theology commits the same error.
 

30 May 2008: Malaise Forever
At school, no matter how busy it was—and oh, it was—there was always something worthwhile to do, worthwhile people to see. I had access to things that interest me. It has been an unpleasant change—as it has been in the past—to return to rural Iowa. Here, the local Zeitgeist (well, it's not a function of time; let's call it instead the "Landgeist") reminds me of the late 1970s: nobody really cares about anything worthwhile. (Also, gas prices are very high.) Bereft of the community—however imperfect—of a campus, I feel listless and isolated; worse, I have no impetus to create anything, be it a composition, drawing, or even a web-log entry. (I use the word "create" in its practical, not literal sense. Humans cannot create anything new. Probably.) Is this the fate of the rural American in the age of the automobile? (Yes, I realize that the age of the automobile may be on its way out, but unfortunately it is not done yet.) There certainly seems to be some disease within American culture that encourages stupidity and other vices.

I need to get out of this. In the meantime I am attempting the method of escapism that got me through childhood and adolescence: reading. Since I'm nearly done with his The Four Loves (more on that later, I promise), and recently saw Prince Caspian, I've been (re-)reading more C.S. Lewis. He's an interesting read, whatever you think of his religion and politics. (It is probably best not to associate him with the hordes of modern-day conservative Christians who profess to like him so much. For his time, Lewis was not particularly conservative; indeed, in some issues he was rather progressive.) Currently I'm in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of my two favorites in the Narnia series. (T'other is The Magician's Nephew... more on that some other time, perhaps.) The scenario of the book I always found compelling: it's a voyage into the unknown, to the edge of the world—and beyond. I don't know about you, but I've always longed for blank regions on the map; there is an inexpressible longing in this old and increasingly tired world for new places. I should mention that there are also monopods in the book, which dovetails nicely with the last piece of literature I've (re-)read, Eco's Baudolino, which I actually enjoyed more the second time. That book, too, has a voyage into mysterious regions; namely, the Kingdom of Prester John, which is a fascinating legend in its own right. (There are many interesting websites regarding Presbyter Johannes, so I shall provide links to several: 1 | 2 | 3)

I wish I dreamed more. (They say that everyone dreams, but I never remember anything, even immediately upon waking.) Perhaps that would offer me a way out of this dreadful sameness of late.

Just on the radio: Britten's War Requiem. I must say that I have no natural affinity for Britten, even for this, what they call his masterpiece. I have heard said that the War Requiem is the greatest piece of 20th-century music, but you can give me Le sacre du printemps or Porgy and Bess or even Wozzeck anyday.
 

22 May 2008:
I suppose I've begun keeping my web-journal again. (You'll see that there's another entry below this; it so happens that I did journal a bit without putting it down on this 'blog. But no matter.)

It's been a very full five months that I've been quiet, and in some ways it seems life comes at us far more quickly when we aren't anticipating it. I have experienced much of life that I hadn't known before, things great and terrible. (I do not mean those words in their modern senses of "very good" and "very bad"; I mean them in a more poetic sense.) Just in these past months I have encountered a far greater gamut of the beauty (mostly natural) and ugliness (mostly human) of the world. A dear friend of mine has left us: requiem æternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Each day I discover more fully my vocation. I have fallen very much in love (unrequited), and been fallen in love with (also unrequited). All in all, it's been quite an experience. But there's no need to rehash everything here, is there?

I am currently reading a very fine book, which I will discuss at length at a later time. (It is, after all, finals week, and I am writing this in time that I really should be using to do other—more "important"—things with.)
 

26 April 2008: Belonging to a Place
It may be colder today, but it certainly is pleasant to look at all the trees. They shout for springtime; across the Rock River Valley one sees stands of elms almost fluorescent in their fiery greenness. Even the sullen oaks have put out little peeping buds. The woods are punctuated with the accents of some purple blossoms—in my ignorance I do not know their name. I hope someday I will know all the names of the trees; it is part of the responsibility and the joy of belonging to a place, knowing its plants and animals. How sad it is, that some people live an entire lifetime without a connection to a particular place. Nobody can claim to care for any place unless they care for one place. (It's one of the many reasons our politicians fail to protect the environment; they are all so transient that they have no sense of a real home worth saving.)

It seems rather paradoxical—doesn't it?—that to love all things we must love one thing in particular. But on this all the best poets and saints agree. Hopkins takes such joy in the "inscape" of a thing—that which makes it itself and nothing else. For him, this one, limited self-ness of one thing also stands for God's infinite glory. The beauty of the varied things of creation, all of them ephemeral, is also the grandeur of God "whose beauty is past change". Mr Berry says something about it too.